Dual Regime Spray of Functional Nanomaterials for Electronic Textiles

Increasing demand for remote telehealth monitoring synergistically advances the field of electronic textiles, or e-textiles, enabling the ambulatory monitoring of vital health signals. E-textiles are typically produced through the additive manufacturing of functional nanomaterials such as conducting nanoparticles, polymers, metals, and ceramics into textiles in a manner that affords multimodal detection of physiological and electrophysiological responses on the skin. Specifically, the current approaches involve the use of either dip coating, screen printing, inkjet printing, and physical vacuum depositing to overcoat fabrics with functional nanomaterials. Despite great advances, the pragmatic deployment of e-textiles in clinical practice remains challenged due to the lack of a rapid prototyping method in producing scalable and customizable e-textiles. Several critical needs still remain to materialize the following requirements: (1) large-scale batch production through the mask-free manufacturing for tailored sensor designs; (2) high-resolution electrode line width through the fine patterning of functional nanomaterials; and (3) long-term durability through the uniform and strong embedment of functional nanomaterials along with yarns in fabrics without aggregation or delamination against multiple uses and laundry cycles.<br/>Here, we employ a programmed dual regime spray technique that enables the direct custom writing of functional nanoparticles into commercial 4-way stretchable textile across a large area over the meter scale. The resulting e-textiles retain the intrinsic fabric properties in terms of wearability, durability, and comfort against multiple uses and laundry cycles. The e-textiles tightly fit various body sizes and shapes to support the high-fidelity recording of physiological and electrophysiological signals on the skin under ambulatory conditions. Pilot field tests in a horse model demonstrate the utility of the e-textiles in remote telehealth monitoring of large animals in a minimally obtrusive manner beyond conventional measurement systems. We believe that the functional nanomaterials and their direct custom writing into e-textiles through the use of programmed dual regime spray technique are expected to serve as a new platform technology for the effective telehealth monitoring of large animals and humans in clinical practice. In this talk, we will describe all the essential construction details, materials, and discuss the key results.